june 09

The Battle of Svenson’s Freehold

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Fought in my basement, June 09, 2003

For our June 09 session, I wanted to try something a little bit different. I decided I would like to try an experiment in table top warfare; getting back to D&D’s wargame roots as it were. I had considered and discarded the original Chainmail simply because the ruleset was too cumbersome --- and decided instead to use a modification of the original Chainmail.

I decided the players would split into two groups (humans and goblins) and would fight for domination of the small village of Svenson’s Freehold/Signpost. I had built a battle table (see picture above) and assembled the appropriate minis.

The goblins had slightly larger numbers but the humans have the possession of the town and got to set up first. By rolling dice we decided that Steve and Chris would run the Goblins and Mike would run the humans. I was the referee. Players on the winning side would get 500 xps each.

The humans had a number of powerful NPCs including Trombley the Dwarf (whom the players had met earlier in Svenson’s Freehold), Milfred Boem the Mayor, The Priest of Saint Vidrian’s Church and Sir Sven Svenson. The humans had a number of footmen soldiers, two unit of longbow archers and four units of peaseant conscripts. If the Goblins managed to kill Sir Sven or capture the entire town not including Sir Sven’s Keep, the game would be over and victory would be given to the goblins.

The Goblins had several a human mage named Balzor as their leader. He had 2 barbarian warrior npcs, 2 human bodyguards, and 2 goblin captains. He comanded 6 units of Goblin archers, 6 units of goblin footmen, a like number of zombies and a single unit of Bugbears and a single pack of wolves. If the humans managed to wipe out 75% of the evil forces and/or kill Balzor, the Goblins would lose and retreat.

I also had a number of sealed envelopes that describe the weather, reinforcements, etc. Every turn we roll to see if we open a randomly chosen envelope -- and if we do, the sun may come out from behind the clouds (bad for the goblins) or go back behind the clouds or reinforcements for either side may arrive, etc.

Steve and Chris went upstairs while Mike set up his humans. He placed Sven and a unit of archers in the Keep, another archer unit atop the tall hill south of the river and a mixed unit of peaseants and footmen led by the cleric just south of the river. He hid the rest of his troops in various houses.

The goblins entered the board from the North -- the zombies marching along the Wolf’s Head Pass road to the bridge and a few archer units coming south along the hills to the west; the rest of their forces came up through the cover of the forest and swamp. As soon as the Zombies came within range, the archers atop the Keep began peppering them with arrows. The goblin archers came up through the swamp and waded the river as the other unit of human archers atop the hill fired arrows at them. The Goblins began firing arrows at the mixed group of peaseants and footsoldiers who promptly scooted back out of range after taking some losses. The zombies crossed the bridge as other units of goblins waded the river. Two optimistic units of goblin archers continued to pepper the archers in the keep without effect.

As the Zombies entered the town, the two Barbarian warriors drank their magic potions. One promptly turned invisible and the other was magically “armored.” Human units emerged from houses and melees began. Although Sven had ealier been spotted entering the Keep, he suddenly emerged south of the hills east of town (unbeknownst to the Goblins, Sven’s keep had an escape tunnel). There were some losses of human and goblin units; notably Milford Boem, Mayor of Signpost. The group of humans led by the cleric retreated to the churchyard.
A chance card was drawn and Zombie reinforcements entered from the west side of the board. Simultaneously, Elven Archers entered the fray from the east side of the board to aid the humans. Things in town began to look dicey.

After the Bugbears came over the rear of the wall of the church and flanked the humans in the churchyard while the goblins engaged them from the front and several combats broke out amongst the humans and undead in the town square, things began to look very bad for the humans. Trombley died after inflicting heavy losses on the Zombies. Balzor cast a spell of invisibility on himself and entered the town. One of the barbarians surprise attacked the elven and human units that had been firing upon the goblins below from atop the hill through use of a potion of invisibility.

Another chance card was drawn and reinforcements arrived from Blackmoor. Sven had once again mysteriously moved back into the keep and was under assault by some units of Goblins. The Blackmoor soldiers ran into town and immeadiately were engaged in combat with undead. Sven burst forth from the Keep and attacked the goblins. Balzor fired off his sleep spell and Sven fell asleep. It became a race to see if the sleep spell would wear off before the humans could rescue Sven or the goblins could capture/kill him. Unfortunately, spells and attacks by the goblins killed the hero and the battle was lost.

The goblins now hold Svenson’s Freehold and Signpost.